Archive for the 'Paul Simon' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

September 13th, 2011, 5:10 pm by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

His April performances at the Pantages were among the best of the season, and his acclaimed new disc - So Beautiful or So What, his first in five years - is not only one of his finest in more than a decade, it's among the most acclaimed works of the year, seemingly a shoo-in for an album of the year nod at next year's Grammys.

As if you need reasons to see Paul Simon. But in case you missed him in spring, here come more chances.

Simon will return to Los Angeles to play Oct. 19 at Gibson Amphitheatre, six days after he turns 70. Tickets, $49.50-$129.50, go on sale Saturday, Sept. 17, at 10 a.m.

After that, he heads directly to Berkeley for a night at that campus' Greek Theatre on Oct. 20, then it's back to Southern California for shows Oct. 22 at San Diego State's Viejas Arena, $39.50- $89.50, on sale Friday at 10 a.m.; and then Oct. 23 at Santa Barbara Bowl, $49-$119, on sale Saturday at 11 a.m. Also catch him Oct. 24 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The Secret Sisters open all dates.

Speaking of the Pantages (well, I was at the start), comedian Kathy Griffin will headline the opulent old theater on Feb. 3, $45-$95, on sale Friday at 10 a.m.

Like its subject, the Joni's Jazz show at the Hollywood Bowl was tough to pin down. Not quite a tribute, nor the kind of all-star evening where songs were torn down, rebuilt, rearranged and reinterpreted, as with Hal Wilner's curated creations for UCLA Live. It probably is best defined as a reconsideration of a very particular phase of Joni Mitchell's career, specifically the albums she released from 1975-79, when she moved away from folk into a jazzier idiom.

Produced by Danny Kapilian (who also staged the 1999 New York concert that was the inspiration for Wednesday's show), the evening proved how music once considered idiosyncratic and unfathomable could be inhabited so comfortably by singers from the realms of pop (Aimee Mann), folk (Frames/Swell Season frontman Glen Hansard), R&B (Chaka Kahn) and jazz (Kurt Elling, Cassandra Wilson).

More than anything else, what sets this type of omnibus show apart is how well the singers are matched to the material -- and on this count, Joni's Jazz delivered exceptionally well.

The songs were played with idiomatic ease by an all-star band, anchored by Brian Blade and featuring guitarist Greg Liesz, saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott (who played on the original recordings) and Herbie Hancock (whose 2007 Mitchell tribute River: The Joni Letters won the Grammy for album of the year).

But this is not easygoing material. As Mitchell moved further and further into jazz, her songs turned away from the personal while her vocal lines became harmonically complex and abstract, less interested in pop hooks than in providing a vehicle for her self-consciously poetic and gnomic lyrics. (In an odd parallel, Lou Reed, a musician rarely if ever mentioned in the same breath as Mitchell, went though a similar phase on his late-'70s/early-'80s albums.)

For the cult of a group known for nonstop tours, L.A.-based Phish-heads have been nothing but patiently waiting for the stalwart jam band to return to their city. Not counting the three-day Festival 8 on the Coachella field two years ago, Phish hadn't been back to Southern California since a July 2003 stop in Chula Vista and hadn't played Los Angeles proper since earlier that year, when they played the Forum on Valentine's Day.

That's enough time for most bands' fans to lose interest entirely. Yet, despite an audience filled with more gray hairs, wedding bands and, yes, even little kids than were at that Forum show, the resilient faithful packed the Hollywood Bowl Monday night for two life-affirming, hands-in-the-air sets that proved their patience paid off.

Rumors of Phish making it to Hollywood's most storied venue have circulated for years, heightening anticipation for what the most devoted of crazies might have considered a prophecy fulfilled. And while it wasn't exactly their greatest show of all-time - as another stoner legend would say: “Far from it, man” - it was filled with enough those oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-this-is-happening moments that have made Phish's cult so large and lasting.

In the first set, such occurrences boiled down to song selections: Following their own blues barn-burner “Possum,” the band launched into a herky-jerky funk-driven rendition of Talking Heads' “Cities,” then Frank Zappa's instrumental “Peaches en Regalia,” a one-two cover-tune punch that was unquestionably a highlight. Keys player Page McConnell's loungy “Lawn Boy” seemed especially Bowl-appropriate, what with its snappy, tongue-in-cheek, Phil Hartman-as-Frank Sinatra grooviness. (It's a shame he didn't use the circular curtain to further cheese it up.)

“Paul! Pauuuuuul! Play ‘Sound of Silence'! ‘Sound of Silence,' Pauuuuuuuul!”

So shouted some selfish rube from the back of the Pantages Theatre less than a dozen tunes into Paul Simon's marvelous 25-song set Wednesday night, his first of two performances this week at the opulent hall primarily used for touring musicals. The unnecessary request was loud enough for the entire orchestra section to hear, probably a few rows of the balcony as well. More than few people mildly hissed when the tactless twit did it a second and third time. “It's not 1969 anymore!” someone yelled back.

Apparently no one told him this wasn't another Simon & Garfunkel reunion. (Even so, isn't shouting out for “The Sound of Silence” at any Simon appearance kinda like hollering “Free Bird” at Lynyrd Skynyrd?) Not only was the suggestion idiotically timed -- that staple typically comes at the end of a show, as it did here, with an exquisite redefining of its stark poetry leading the encores -- it also underscored just how hard it can be for a legendary songwriter's new material to curry favor with his own audience.

That's a shame given how much Simon still has to say. Unlike all but the mightiest titans remaining from his generation -- Dylan, McCartney, Plant -- he's much less concerned with plumbing through the past, apart from discovering how it connects to the present.

All the same, the Springfield sprang to life and thrived briefly as part of the Sunset Strip scene of the mid-'60s, so it's only fitting that following their resurfacing at Young's annual Bridge School benefit last October in Mountain View (where the photo was taken) -- and just days ahead of their Bonnaroo set -- the band will play two shows, June 4-5, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

Die-hard fans also can catch the group June 1-2 at the Fox Theater in Oakland, where Gillian Welch will open. (No word yet on a SoCal warm-up act.) As in October, drummer Joe Vitale will fill in for Dewey Martin, who died in 2009, and regular Young bassist Rick Rosas will take the place of Bruce Palmer, who passed in 2004.

Tickets for the Wiltern gigs, $89.50-$250, go on sale Friday, April 1, at 10 a.m. The Oakland shows, $85-$199.50, are on sale Sunday at 10 a.m.

Late last year Paul Simon revealed that a new album, his first in five years, was on the way by unveiling a new holiday song, "Getting Ready for Christmas Day." Now comes word that his 12th solo album, So Beautiful or So What, will arrive April 12 via Hear Music/Concord Music Group and will be followed by a brief tour that kicks off April 15 in Seattle.

Shortly after that, the legendary singer-songwriter will headline two nights, April 20-21, at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Tickets go on sale March 13 at 10 a.m. Prices aren't available yet, but those for the WaMu Theater stop in Seattle are $65-$85, so expect L.A. tickets to cost comparably.

Produced by Simon and longtime collaborator Phil Ramone, whose work with the Hall of Famer dates back to There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973) and Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), the new 10-track effort has already been lauded by Rolling Stone, Filter and the author himself as his best work since Graceland (1986). Elvis Costello wrote the liner notes. You can hear a few tracks from it via the official website.

Simon will further promote it by appearing for two consecutive nights, April 6-7, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Meanwhile, his band for this coming outing will include Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, drummer Jim Oblon, pianist Mick Rossi, saxophonist/keyboardist Andrew Snitzer, bassist Bakithi Kumalo, guitarist Mark Stewart, master percussionist Jamey Haddad and multi-instrumentalist Tony Cedras.

In case you weren't aware -- I wasn't until I caught up with him last week -- Donavon Frankenreiter no longer lives in Orange County.

He hasn't, actually, since 2007, a year before his last album came out. But at least when Pass It Around surfaced he and his wife Petra still had a verdant, tucked-away sanctuary just off Laguna Canyon Road. They just weren't there very much.

“We were spending way more time here,” Donavon explains, “and the kids started going to school here. It's heaven on Earth for me and my family.”

He's hardly the first person to think so of Hawaii -- the beaches of Kauai, to be exact. That's where this permanently laid-back surfer-singer-songwriter sat while we killed the better part of an hour over the phone.

Not that a return visit is out of the question, but I wish Jack Johnson hadn't already headlined at Coachella.

Never mind that he was overshadowed in 2008 by Roger Waters' Dark Side of the Moon spectacle, plus rare sightings of Prince and Portishead and a hard-rocking undercard that made his Friday-closing set seem even sleepier than usual. What's obvious in hindsight is that, even though the surfing singer-songwriter has been making festival appearances virtually since he first went platinum almost a decade ago, he nonetheless wasn't ready to produce a powerhouse performance to such a massive audience.

But now he is: the superb show the amiable 35-year-old delivered to a capacity party crowd Tuesday night at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine would kill at Coachella, leaving 'em dancing, not dozing. A full two hours long and stuffed with nearly 30 songs that skimmed the cream of his five albums (plus the joyful “Upside Down” from his Curious George soundtrack), Johnson's lag-free, groove-heavy set made for his best O.C. appearance yet: smartly paced, rousingly played, deeply satisfying.

He's never been less than likable, of course -- those who hate on his pleasant, breezy sounds probably despise sunshine and smiles, too. What has changed amid the shift from the cloudier, challenging Sleep Through the Static and his brighter new disc To the Sea is that his music has gained some bite and Beatles-ish shadings (mostly McCartney-esque whimsy) to fill in the cracks of his summery foundation. Personal gloom and political hand-wringing seems to have passed; in its place are happier love songs and reflections on life that leave you inspired -- if not as ebullient as DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic then at least no longer adrift on murky waters.

The most noticeable advance: Johnson is favoring his red electric guitar far more these days than his standard acoustic six-string, and after years of sharp but merely serviceable riffing his fretwork is really developing into a style all its own, with subtly stinging solos to match. The slapped-out bits at the end of “Go On,” for instance, smoothed over by gentle glides up and down the neck, were like nothing I've seen him attempt before. Suddenly there's a confidence about him -- it may not come through in his low-key, eyes-closed demeanor, and I wonder if it translated further back in the venue (friends in the terrace section thought the show was just “nice”), but the energy he stoically exudes these days is almost palpable.

September 29th, 2010, 1:42 am by BEN WENER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

On Feb. 16, two days before she turned 77, the incomparable Yoko Ono, who by now has released nearly as many albums as her venerated late husband, served as both performer and honoree at a guest-heavy fête at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The event, dubbed We Are Plastic Ono Band and arranged under the musical direction of Ono and John Lennon's son, Sean Lennon, was a hot-ticket smash success in NYC, and it's about to have an L.A. encore, Friday and Saturday at the Orpheum Theatre, the opulent downtown venue that most people (apart from indie-music concert-goers) primarily know these days as the home of Hollywood Week on American Idol.

The roll call for this weekend's tributes has changed, but the caliber of artists who will salute four decades of music and performance art still speaks to Ono's enduringly daring and idiosyncratic style. Iggy Pop, Mike Watt of the Minutemen and Nels Cline of Wilco take part Friday, while Lady Gaga -- whose calculated outrageousness owes at least as much to Ono as it does Madonna -- will appear Saturday night, along with Moore and Gordon.

Appearing at both performances will be an array like you never see on the same stage: Perry Farrell, the RZA of Wu-Tang Clan, actors Carrie Fisher and Vincent Gallo, Pitchfork darling tUnE-yArDs, electronic music pioneer Haruomi Hosono of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and the current, Japanese-rich incarnation of the Plastic Ono Band, led by Sean but also featuring avant-gardist Cornelius and Yuka Honda of the group Cibo Matto.

Now here's one of the few truly intriguing things to head our way in a while ...

In February, for the first time since the '70s, Yoko Ono, now 77, performed her still-one-of-a-kind Plastic Ono Band material at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with backing from the original players: Eric Clapton, bassist/artist Klaus Voorman and renowned drummer Jim Keltner.

Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth joined in. So did Bette Midler. And Paul Simon, and his son Harper, whose solo debut arrived last year, just in case you missed it, and who (again, for those catching up) has recorded as the Heavy Circles with Paul's wife, New Bohemians singer-songwriter Edie Brickell.

Sean Lennon, Yoko & John's progeny, organized it all, naturally. After all, apart from creating his own discography (so consistently bittersweet/enjoyable I wish it would double in size), he's also a principal member of the new Plastic Ono Band. That group helped make Yoko's acclaimed 2009 album Between My Head and the Sky -- and, in addition to noted Japanese artist Cornelius, its lineup also features longtime Ono Lennon associate Yuko Honda, one-half of the quirky pop outfit Cibo Matto.

Must-see stuff, if you ask me. Bette Midler and Sonic Youth in the same evening? That's so Yoko Ono. Consider my Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers plans changed -- I'll miss their Bowl show on Oct. 1 to see Yoko & Co. and catch 'em the next night in Irvine instead.